Baby weight didn’t get Padma down. “I didn’t feel the pressure to be stick thin right away because I was healing,” she told HollywoodLife.com EXCLUSIVELY!

“I actually was doing sound editing for the show and saw myself on camera,” Padma, a model and host of Top Chef, admitted t0 HollywoodLife.com EXCLUSIVELY at the 2nd Annual Blossom Ball at the New York City Library on May 20. “Today I’m 12 weeks after giving birth, but I went back to filming the show just after 6 weeks. There was a big difference. I look like a big woman, and I do, and that’s ok — I had a baby. It’s alright. I didn’t really feel the pressure to be stick thin right away because I was healing.”

“To be honest, I liked being bigger,” Padma confessed. “I think that women who are round and big are also very sexy. I felt very voluptuous and very sensual. I didn’t feel like I needed to be bone thin again. I felt that I had gone through the process of motherhood from being a girl to being a woman and I think there’s all kinds of value in all body shapes.”

But, even though Padma thinks “all body shapes” are sexy, that hasn’t stopped her from trying to get back in shape. “I’m nursing, that’s a lot of it,” she said. “I also continue to work really hard at it. I run up and down the emergency stairs in my building. I go on the treadmill, jump rope. I try to watch what I eat obviously. It’s hard.”

Despite the fight to get her old self back, Padma keeps her daughter and herself surrounded by the people who love her and give her moral support. “My mother has actually been spending a lot of time with me,” she said. “I believe one of the things that’s great is to have as many generations in the family involved with the child. So, my mother has very generously taken a leave of absence from work and spent the last 6 months with me.

And the mother daughter devotion has taught Padma a lot about being a mother herself: “The thing I learned from my mother is just be very physical with children and to hold them and to really nurture them. Give them a sense of security and well being just by body heat. I’ve noticed that my mother does that with her granddaughter. I remember that from when I was little.”

Her family also helped Padma prepare for the arrival of her daughter: “A member of my family made me a beautiful baby iPod with a lot of classical music — both Indian classical music as well as Mozart and Mendelssohn,” she explained. “I would stick the little iPod buds in my pants and I would just make the baby listen. Just a little bit, not to much, becaue amniotic fluid I am told is very sound conductive.”

Padma also had one other ritual she used consistently throughout her pregnancy. “I read a lot,” she said. “I read the New York Times out loud. I hope [that it will help her when she’s older]. You just do the best that you can.”

Now that she’s a mom, Padma is enjoying every minute of motherhood, remaning grateful for the beautiful gift of her baby girl. “My pregnancy wasn’t an easy or an ideal one, and I just wanted to do whatever was healthy for the baby,” she explained. “There was a point where I just wanted to make sure everything, not unlike every mother in the world, that everything went fine.”

Padma — we wish you the best of luck during this beautiful journey. But, we are still curious to learn the identity of your baby-daddy. We can’t wait until you share who he is!